


Why Can't it Be Like That?

by Heart_Seoul_Soshi



Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-02
Updated: 2017-09-02
Packaged: 2018-12-22 21:55:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11975817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heart_Seoul_Soshi/pseuds/Heart_Seoul_Soshi
Summary: Love is weakness.  And on The Isle of the Lost, weakness doesn't fly.





	Why Can't it Be Like That?

**Author's Note:**

> from an anonymous request on tumblr, inspired by "Secret Love Song" by Little Mix & "They Don't Know About Us" by One Direction

_“Love is weakness, my dear.”_  
  
There had been countless occasions where Mal—stuck at the kitchen table listening to the latest “Long Live Evil” spiel—thought that if her mother came with her own talking action figure, that would be the catchphrase.  
  
 _“Love is weakness, my dear.”_  
  
She’d silently mock her mother for it, for the constant repetition, but still, she believed her wholeheartedly.  She’d heard the stories, after all.  The stories of a foolish prince risking his whole life for a mere maiden in a battle against a dragon, the stories of a foolish young girl gambling wishes upon a poisoned fruit, the foolish scullery maid waging her entire happily ever after on a single dance and a pair of glass slippers.  Love brought out the deepest stupidity in everyone it touched; like a disease of the brain-eating variety it drove people to madness, recklessness, folly and failure.  Love was weakness, and Mal believed that with every square inch of her wisely closed-off heart.  
  
Until the day love became earth brown eyes, rich and alive, a laugh like tinkling bells, a girl with a smile like the sun and the aura of the moon, until the day love became soft waves of blue falling into a face that just  _couldn’t_  be real.

But those brand new and pure days of strange flutterings in chests and stolen breaths were short-lived, for it soon became obvious that Maleficent’s “Love is weakness, my dear” was less a word to the wise and more a cardinal rule on the Isle of the Lost.  In a land lorded over by evil, how could Mal not have guessed? For a villain to love was like for the do-gooders in Auradon to sin: it simply wasn’t done, and untold punishments faced those who did.  That alone should have stopped her right then and there before someone found out, should have plucked the blooming feelings and experiences from the roots and burned them with the trash.  In another universe she might’ve been able to walk away, perhaps, a universe where she hadn’t already fallen so hard and so fast.  But not this one.  
  
Jay didn’t even bat an eye when Mal asked him to show her how to climb.    
  
The two of them together, scaling rough walls, Jay teaching her all the tips and tricks of where to find the right handholds, how to leap from ledge to ledge—to the outside observer, they were up to perfectly no good, the way villains were supposed to be.  It was the dead of night when Mal gave herself the final exam, sizing up the sheer stone face before her with more trepidation than she cared to admit.  A deep breath, and then Jay’s voice was in her head, telling her to push with her legs and not give into the instinct to pull with her arms.  To make sure her feet were solid on the wall before she dared move her hands.  Plan ahead. Foot, hand, foot, hand, foot, hand.  She wasn’t used to it the way Jay was, having insisted on a crash course the way she did, and at the top of her climb her arms were on fire, her body ached, she wasn’t even sure if she could feel her fingers.  But it suddenly felt worth it when she shakily rose to her feet on the balcony and lightly rapped at the window with a numb hand.  
  
She had to fight the urge to simply let her legs buckle underneath her and drop her flat on her butt, but she willed the strength to return to her when the face appeared at the glass, unlocking the huge window from the other side and swinging it open.  
  
“…Mal??” Evie’s earth brown eyes were wide, whispering the girl’s name like saying it out loud would make her appearance at her window real.  "Mal, you can’t be here!“  
  
Evie’s wide eyes looked over one shoulder, and then another, darting all across her room even though she was the only one in there.  Mal too looked past Evie to eye the bedroom door, shut tight, but with the potential to be thrown open at any second should the Evil Queen decide to make some rounds.  
  
"Mal, you have to go,” Evie stepped out onto the balcony in her bare feet, already changed into her pajamas of sapphire blue satin.  
  
“I climbed a ninety degree angle to get here,” Mal said, dodging the hand that Evie tried to gently push her back with.  
  
“Well, then, you can just climb down it again,” Evie cast another anxious glance into her room and at the door.  
  
“E, I…I just wanna see you,” Mal’s smile was sad and desperate, a strange look on her.  
  
“You can see me tomorrow with Jay and Carlos.”  
  
Evie made to push her away again, Mal dodged again.  
  
“No, I want to see  _you_ ,” Mal stepped forward.  "Look, I’ll stay by the window.  The second we even think we hear your mom, I’m gone.“  
  
A third look back from Evie, and then a sigh of defeat that ended in a tiny smile, the sun on a cloudy day.  When her hand reached out this time, it went for Mal’s, leading her from the balcony and into the room.  
  
They shouldn’t have laughed, shouldn’t have indulged in each other’s company the way they did, but they couldn’t stop themselves. Every giggle, every happy sound that escaped from Evie was cut short with a gasp and a whip of her head to the ornate yet weathered bedroom door, while just behind her, Mal’s muscles tensed, ready to spring out the window at a moment’s notice.  It was cat and mouse, cat and mouse, for much longer then either of them realized, for an accidental look at the clock showed them that they had talked almost all night and morning would be breaking in just a few short hours.  
  
”…Now you really have to go,“ Evie’s words weren’t as urgent this time, rising to her feet from where she’d sat with Mal on the floor.  
  
From climbing up to the balcony to stepping back out onto it, it felt like no time at all had passed for Mal, that she’d only been with Evie for a second.  Hopping up onto the balcony’s ledge and perching there, one last look at the window didn’t even grant her a glimpse of Evie’s face, just the curtains being drawn over the glass, the room going dark as Evie blew out the candles she’d lit because lamplight under the door would’ve caught her mother’s attention.  
  
Time with Evie passed like the blink of an eye.  Time walking alone on the dark Isle streets, back to her own castle, passed like tar.  
  
 _"Love is weakness, my dear.”_  
  
And Mal certainly felt it.  The dizzy fog in her head when she wasn’t near Evie, the invisible ropes pulling at her heart when she  _was_  near Evie but had to play it painfully cool, the squeezing in her chest when Evie wouldn’t even look at her because she knew the adoration that shone in her eyes when she caught sight of Mal might out them both.  
  
“I wish…” Evie said one night, joining Mal out on the balcony and gazing up at the clouded sky, as if she’d one day see the stars if she only stared hard enough.  
  
“I know,” Mal mumbled, tracing patterns on the balcony’s ledge with her finger.  "But hey, I’m getting better at climbing.“  
  
"Mal…” Evie chuckled and leaned over to bump her shoulder against Mal’s.  
  
“I could come on a magic carpet one night,” Mal teasingly went on, now watching Evie out of the corner of her eye.  "Fly right here to the balcony to get you.  It could just be you and me.  No one to tell us no, or where to go.“  
  
"Or say we’re only dreaming?” Evie finished. “ _You’re_  dreaming, good luck getting a magic carpet to work under the barrier.”  
  
Mal knew it, she’d just hoped Evie wouldn’t bring it up and ruin the illusion.  
  
“…Jay and I are going down to the wharf tomorrow to snag some of the oh-so-gracious gifts coming in from Auradon.  You tagging along?  Or are you going to avoid me some more?”  
  
“M, I’m not  _avoiding_  you,” Evie said seriously.  "I’m trying to…M, I am ridiculous around you.  Anyone could see it.  And if anyone could see it, then—"  
  
“Yeah…” Mal understood.  And she had known Evie wasn’t avoiding her, she knew why Evie distanced herself a bit in public.  It was just the work of that weakness, that sickness, making her goad Evie for no other reason than she could.  "You didn’t answer my question.“  
  
"I answered one of them…I’ll be there, Mal.  I’ll meet you down at the wharf.”  
  
And she did that next day, hanging back daintily while Jay and Mal spent an afternoon sifting through Auradon’s leftovers as they trickled in from the barge. It wasn’t until the setting sun touched the sky with reds and pinks, until Jay tromped off for the day with a garbage bag full of prizes slung over his shoulder, that Evie crept closer to Mal.  But it wasn’t Mal she was after, it was the edge of the docks, where the sunset was reflected like rubies in the water.  It was a pretty sight, yet still not what was holding her attention.  
  
Auradon was across the way, shimmering like a jewel.  
  
“What do you think it’s like?” Evie asked, absolutely fixated.  
  
“Gross,” Mal flatly said.  "Filled to the brim with prissy pink princesses.“  
  
She scrunched up her face like the smell clinging to the wharf all afternoon had just now hit her.  Evie tore her eyes away from the shape of Auradon just long enough to look offended.  
  
”…What?  You’re blue,“ Mal shrugged.  
  
Evie shook her head with a tiny huff, going back to admiring the shoreline.  
  
The sunset.  Mal made the terrible mistake of looking at it.  Of looking at the way it shone down on Evie, how she stood against an ethereal backdrop of sea and sky like one of Mal’s paintings come to life.  It hit her like one of the waves they could hear crashing against their own shoreline.  The sickness. The sickness sent painful electricity to her hands, making them want to reach out for Evie’s, spreading that electricity to her arms with every second she couldn’t put them around her.  
  
"I-I gotta go,” she blurted quickly with almost no control; another symptom.  "I’ll see you at school, okay?“  
  
She spun on her heels so fast it made her dizzy.  
  
"Mal?” Evie turned just in time to see Mal scampering off, not even remembering to grab her own scavengings from the Auradon barge.  "Mal, wait!“  
  
She started after her, undeterred by how fast Mal was.  And Mal didn’t even want to  _know_  how Evie was keeping up with her, the girl was in heels, after all.  The natural defense mechanism of ignoring problems until they went away just didn’t seem to be working here, for Evie dogged her all the way from the wharf to where Mal tried to disappear into a back alley.  
  
"Evie, just go,” Mal said tiredly, not so much exhausted from running as she was just…exhausted in general.  
  
“No,” Evie drew to an almost-stop when Mal did, carefully drawing closer like the girl was some timid creature who’d go skittering away with the slightest of wrong movements.  
  
Mal leaned back against the wall of the alley, her soul-deep exhaustion making her slump down onto her heels with no will to continue standing.  
  
“…Were you even going to say bye?” Evie asked.  
  
“No,” Mal petulantly repeated Evie’s word back to her, avoiding her eyes.  And then, it hit her again, another one of the waves like the ones they heard crashing against the shoreline.  "Or…maybe I will.“  
  
Evie swore her heart stopped.  
  
”…What?“  
  
”…E, we  _cannot_ do this.“  
  
"Mal!” Evie gasped, crouching down in front of her.  
  
Mal shook her head slowly, back and forth, back and forth, still not meeting the eyes that were now right in front of her.  The suspiciously shiny eyes that were now right in front of her.  
  
“E, we are  _so_  dead if anyone finds out about this.”  
  
“So we won’t let them find out!  That doesn’t mean we have to say goodbye!”  
  
“But it does.  Don’t you get it?  We’re hopeless around each other, and for the first time in our lives, we’re  _really_  bad at lying.”  
  
Another terrible mistake, the mistake of finally looking into Evie’s eyes.  The brown of the earth was drowning in water.  
  
“…Mal, you can’t say goodbye to me.  Are you trying to tell me we can’t even hang out?  Not even when we’re with the boys?”  
  
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.  My mother banished you to your castle for an entire decade.  Not seeing you now will be…no big deal…”  
  
Mal’s voice utterly betrayed her and cracked.  Evie’s earth was swimming in water, and now Mal’s forest was too.  
  
“I’m sure my mom is just full of fun little schemes and plots to help keep me busy.  I won’t even notice.”  
  
“ _I’ll_  notice,” Evie inched closer to her.  "Jay and Carlos will notice.  Everyone will notice that the Rotten Four are suddenly the Rotten Three and  _that_  will be more suspicious than you and I could ever be!“   
  
Evie’s words tumbled out in a frantic rush, very unlike her.  
  
"A villain kid ditching and betraying her crew?  No one’s going to bat an eye.”  
  
Evie batted both of hers, making one last attempt to keep the flood at bay.  
  
“I can’t not see you, Mal.”  
  
“You’ll see me at school.  It’ll be fine.”  
  
“No it won’t!  Mal,  _please_ don’t say goodbye to me…I love you.”  
  
There it was, the first tear running down Evie’s cheek.  Mal turned her head and roughly rubbed her eyes before the same could happen to her.  Evie’s hand was on her knee then, squeezing so tight.  
  
“…I love you, Mal.”  
  
One last time, Mal forced herself to look at her.  One last time, the forest met the earth.  
  
“…But I don’t want to love  _you_ , Evie…”

* * *

Mal couldn’t go home after that.  
  
She couldn’t let her mother hear the sobs wrenching their way free from her chest, or see the way her arms, hands, and everything else violently shook with each cry.  
  
So she broke into Hell Hall like the delinquent she was, knowing that Carlos was trapped accompanying his mother while she day-tripped to the salon and both were out of the mansion.  Alone in the attic, 90% sure her shaking would bust the dilapidated rafters and send her tumbling down to the next floor, she had never felt more weak.  More sick.  Like the tightness in her chest and her throat would make her throw up if she didn’t get a handle on it.  
  
 _“Love is weakness, my dear.”_  
  
And that weakness seized her, body and soul, for the first month, the second, and part of the third, until her mother came bursting through her bedroom door with a dramatic flourish.  Mal was rightfully startled, scrambling to flip her sketchbook from the drawing she was doing of Evie to the much safer drawing of the castle.  
  
“I have news!” Maleficent said loudly, sporting a nasty grin.  "I buried the lead. You four have been chosen to go to a different school.“  
  
Mal raised an eyebrow.  
  
"We four who?” she questioned.  
  
“Your little group, or whatever it is,” Maleficent said uninterestedly with a wave of her hand.  "Carlos and Jay, and that other one.“  
  
”…Evie,“ Mal finished.  ”…Mom, they’re not my little group, I don’t see them anymore.“  
  
Her mother frowned.  
  
"Since when?”  
  
“Since three months ago,” Mal muttered, not surprised but still offended that her mom really hadn’t even noticed.  
  
So caught up with sudden thoughts of Evie was she that she didn’t right away stop to wonder why her mom seemed so delighted about the thought of her going to another school.  
  
“…Wait, what school?” she warily questioned.  "If you’re about to tell me I have to transfer and go to school with that shrimpy little—"  
  
“Auradon Prep!” Maleficent answered with another dramatic flourish, brandishing her scepter.  
  
Auradon.  Memories of standing on the docks at sunset, Evie’s glittering gaze fixed on the mainland.  
  
But then it struck Mal that there was Maleficent, mistress of evil, looking almost  _giddy_ at the thought of her daughter, princess of evil, being shipped off to the land of the do-gooders.  
  
“…What’s the catch?” she again warily questioned, too suspicious at the moment to vehemently deny going to that boarding school filled to the brim with prissy pink princesses.  
  
The catch was a wand.  A wand belonging to what Maleficent bitterly referred to as “a certain boppitty Fairy Godmother”, to which Mal only had a chance to get out “…I don’t actually think boppitty is an adjec—” before her mom cut her off.   
  
There was barely even time to pack before a car horn was honking outside, and Maleficent was pushing her out the door.  
  
And there she was.  Mal was so glad her mother hadn’t come down to the front door to see her off; watching from her spot up on the balcony, she couldn’t hear Mal’s breath catch in her throat when she caught sight of Evie by a stretch limo with Carlos and Jay.  
  
“Look who it is,” Jay sauntered over with a sly smile.    
  
“Long time no see,” Carlos added teasingly, knowing they still glimpsed Mal in school.  
  
“Hey, M,” the last but not least said easily.  
  
Her hair had gotten longer, just a bit, spiraling perfectly past her shoulders. Then suddenly, it was like nothing had changed at all.  Time with Evie again passed like the blink of an eye.  Loading up the limo,  _leaving_  The Isle, believe it or not, a small bridge misunderstanding which led to screaming VKs and Evie’s arm suddenly around her, and then the arrival in Auradon.  Mal never thought she’d see the day when a procession of instruments would greet her arrival.  Kind of annoying, to be perfectly honest.  There was the certain boppitty Fairy Godmother, the simpering prince of Auradon, and his quote-unquote “girlfriend”, who was clearly faker and phonier than the “bargains” Jafar advertised in his shop.  
  
But there was something else, too.  Yes, there was Audrey, the daughter of her mother’s worst nemesis, stirring up the resentment in Mal’s blood that had been settled there since the day she was born.  But there was also Audrey, clinging to Ben’s arm with all the sickening tenacity of Ursula’s tentacles—right there in front of everyone.  She didn’t look over her shoulder.  She didn’t have tense anxiety in her eyes.  Fairy Godmother even looked the two of them over with a smile before she tasked them with giving Mal and her gang the grand tour.  A grand tour that unceremoniously ended with Mal and Evie alone in their dorm room, because since Mal’s life just couldn’t be allowed to get any easier, of course she had to have Evie as her roommate.  The cruel tricksters of the universe demanded that she did.  
  
“This place is so…” Evie breathed, taking in the room.  "Amaz—"  
  
“Gross,” Mal accidentally blurted.  The wonder and excitement in Evie’s voice had registered too late, and Mal regretted the syllable the second it slipped through her lips.  
  
Cautiously, she looked to Evie, imagining that at this moment in time she knew exactly what walking on thin ice felt like.  
  
“…You would think so,” was all Evie said.  Not with bitterness, or cruelty, but…a ghost of a smile that she failed to fight back.  
  
A lot of pink in the dorm room, hence Mal’s “gross”, and Evie claimed her bed, pink upon white upon more pink.  
  
“So,” Mal started, swaying on her feet.  "You’re in Auradon, E.“  
  
Mal tried to voice her words with an unspoken little "woo hoo”, but didn’t think it came through.  God, this was awkward.  Leave it to Mal to break up with a girl before they’d even started dating.  
  
“Yeah.  We’re in Auradon,” Evie dropped her purse onto the bed and went to the window, looking out over the tidily kept grounds.  "Here to steal Fairy Godmother’s wand.  I heard all about it.“  
  
”…Your mom told you?“  
  
"And Carlos’ mom told him, and Jay’s father told him.  We all know why we’re here. To steal the wand and hightail it back to The Isle, so your mom can bring down the barrier and the villains can invade Auradon.”  
  
“…Long live evil,” Mal muttered, dropping down onto the foot of her new bed, bouncing a little bit as she silently marveled at the ridiculous softness.  
  
“…Surprised all of us were dragged into this. You were supposed to be busy with your mom’s little schemes and plots for the past three months, I thought this would just be another one of them.”  
  
“I’m sure she thinks I can’t pull this off on my own.  I’m not good enough for that.”  
  
“Is that second part also what your mother thinks?  Or what you think?”   
  
Mal didn’t answer.

* * *

“…So your mom just gave you her magic mirror?” Mal asked later that night, hovering around Evie’s chair.  
  
The four of them officially plotting together again in the boys’ dorm for the first time in three months.  Mal was the leader once more, segueing right back into the role with no trouble at all, peering over Evie’s shoulder and looking at the cracked hand mirror.  
  
“Yeah,” Evie nodded.  
  
“Then what are we waiting around for?  We’ve got a wand to find.”  
  
Carlos and Jay, absorbed in a video game, were nonplussed with Mal’s drive.  
  
“Right now?” Carlos asked.    
  
Mal narrowed her eyes at him.  
  
“Yeah.   _Right now_.”  
  
Her tone alone is what got the boys to exchange a resigned look and drop the video game, slinking over to the table to join Mal and Evie.  
  
“E,” Mal snapped her fingers and sat down in the chair beside her.  "Go for it.“  
  
Mal couldn’t understand the meaning behind the glance Evie gave her out of the corner of her eye, and therefore ignored it.  
  
"Mirror mirror, on th—in my hand, where is Fairy Godmother’s wand…stand?”  
  
“Nice,” Carlos said.  
  
The mirror was in need of some calibration.  
  
“Whoa, zoom out,” Jay told Evie.  
  
It took a couple tries, but soon they had it: a museum in the city.  They’d have to sneak out of the school and make their way there.  
  
Which was easier said than done, on foot, but still they made it.  Breaking through the front doors and slipping past the night watchmen with the help of Mal’s own gift from her mother—her spellbook.  They were the Rotten Four again, scheming and stealing their way to what they wanted.  Up the stairs on tip toes, Mal hanging back and making sure the others got to the top first, following Evie’s mirror straight for the wand until it took them right past the wing of the museum they really should’ve read the signs for before they started up the staircase: the Gallery of Villains.  
  
Large as life replicas of the Evil Queen, Jafar, Cruella de Vil, and Maleficent. Stunning the VKs with their haunting accuracy.  As if they hadn’t even left The Isle at all.  
  
“…Well, the wand’s not here,” Jay cleared his throat.  "Let’s bounce.“  
  
The other three hesitated.  
  
”…Let’s  _go_ ,“ he insisted, whirling around and heading out.  Only Carlos followed, unbeknownst to him.  
  
It was Evie and Mal who lingered in that darkened gallery, eyes locked on their mothers while their ears heard the footsteps of the boys become fainter and fainter.  
  
”…You and me, here together in front of our moms,“ Evie was the one to break the silence.  ”…Who would’ve thought.“  
  
It took effort, but Mal managed to wrench her gaze away from the Maleficent statue to look at Evie.  
  
”…Do you hate me, E?“  
  
And three months of bottled up emotions suddenly became uncorked.  
  
”…How could I hate you?  You did what you had to do.“  
  
"What I had to do?  Or what I wanted to do?” Mal didn’t quite know who she was asking.  
  
“You didn’t want to give up,” Evie said firmly. “I know you better than that.”  
  
Mal moved closer to her, slowly, step by step.  
  
“E…we’re in Auradon now,” sparks of hope colored her tone, bringing up the one thought that had been building and snowballing in the back of her mind all day long.  "Our parents aren’t here.  _No one’s_ here to care what we do or don’t do!!“  
  
Evie hung her head.  
  
”…But we aren’t  _staying_  in Auradon,“ she said.  "We’re only here to get the wand, and then we’re going back to The Isle.  We can all prove ourselves to our parents, just like we’ve always wanted to.”  
  
Mal remembered the day at the docks.  The sunset.  Evie standing before the sea.  Mal remembered how she wanted nothing more that evening than to just put her arms around Evie and hold her.  She had never felt a pull like that before, not even a pull to prove herself to her mother like Evie had said.  Compared to that moment at the docks, the urge to prove herself was nothing more than a light tug.  
  
“Hey!” Jay’s reappearance startled them both.  "Move it or lose it!“  
  
That really did seem to be their only two choices in life.  
  
Operation Snatch-and-Grab failed miserably thanks to Jay’s sticky trigger fingers, and Mal’s gang trudged their way back to Auradon Prep in defeat, knowing school and a sickening day of goodness awaited them in the morning. Evie’s eyes fluttered open that night from the deep sleep her amazing bed had brought to her.  On instinct she didn’t even know she had, she rolled over, looking across the room and finding the shape of Mal bundled under the covers in her own bed.  So close, and so far.  She watched Mal sleep until her eyes fell shut once more.  
  
A day turned into another day.  Those days turned into two weeks.  Evie found herself at the sewing machine in the dorm room when the door was thrown open and Mal whirled in with all the dramatics of her mother.  She looked like she was about to transition smoothly into angered pacing when she caught sight of Evie and stopped dead in her tracks.  
  
”…What do you think you’re doing?“ Mal demanded.  
  
"Sewing.  Do you like?” Evie held up the garment.  
  
“You know what I’d like, E? To get my hands on the wand!  But I can’t seem to do that with you sitting here playing dressmaker and the boys out becoming jocks on the Tourney field!!”  
  
Evie wasn’t even fazed by Mal’s snap.  
  
“Another plan struck out, huh?  First the museum, then Jane—”  
  
“And now we can’t even get close enough to it at the coronation.  The coronation is our  _last chance_  to steal the wand before it gets sealed back up in the museum, and instead of helping me figure out what to do, everyone’s gone native on me!!”  
  
Mal dropped onto her bed, burying her face in her hands.  Evie frowned.  This wasn’t how Mal usually acted when she got worked up.  So the sewing stopped, and Evie rose to her feet.  
  
“A little extra driven to get the wand lately, aren’t you?” she began, crossing the room and hanging onto the bedpost.  
  
Mal lowered her hands.  
  
“We’re running out of time,” she said through clenched teeth.  
  
“Are we?  Because the way I see it, if coronation comes, and we don’t steal the wand…then coronation ends, and we go to school the next day, business as usual.”  
  
“Our parents—”  
  
“Are stuck on The Isle with no way out.   _We_ had the way out.  Mal, if we fail, they can’t do anything about it.  They can’t come here to get us, bringing evil and destruction in their wake.  They can’t bring us back to The Isle and punish us…they can’t hurt us here.”  
  
That.  
  
That was the one thought that had literally never, ever, occurred to Mal.  Or any of the VKs besides Evie, for that matter.  
  
“I thought it too, M.  I thought we had to help you steal the wand and get back home before it was too late.  I thought that we shouldn’t get used to it here in Auradon because we wouldn’t be staying.  And I was wrong.”  
  
“…We don’t have to go back?” Mal’s voice was small, her eyes wide like a child’s as she looked up at Evie.  
  
“We don’t have to go back…or maybe you just  _want_  to go back.  Back to running away and hiding in your castle for months at a time.”  
  
Evie unintentionally ended on a bitter note, returning to the desk and starting up the sewing machine once more.  The two girls sat in silence, silence punctuated only by the “tatatatatatata” of the needle.  Here, now, time with Evie didn’t pass like the blink of an eye.  Time with Evie passed like tar.  
  
“…I’m so sorry I said it the way I did.”  
  
For a split second, Mal worried she spoke too quietly to be heard over the “tatatatatatata” in the room.  
  
“It’s been a long week, I’m used to you snapping by now,” Evie flatly said, keeping her eyes down and focused as her fingers turned the fabric around.  
  
“What?  No, not about the wand…Evie, I so badly wanted to say it.  You have  _no_  idea how badly.  But we couldn’t…I-I couldn’t…”  
  
Now Evie was beginning to get an inkling of just what Mal was talking about. But this time, Mal came to her, standing from the bed and shuffling over to Evie’s desk chair.  
  
“Did you really think I didn’t want to say it?”  
  
“…I didn’t know what to think, Mal.  One minute you were there, and then you were gone.  You walked away from me right then and there without any warning. Well, actually, you ran away…and really, you didn’t even say it at all.”  
  
Mal knelt down in front of the chair, folding her arms over Evie’s knees and looking straight into that familiar brown with an expression that Evie couldn’t quite read.  
  
“Everything is different now.  E, we’re in  _Auradon_ ,” a smile fought its way to Mal’s lips.  "This isn’t The Isle.  It’s all different here, it’s everything you thought it might be when you looked out across the water and saw the entire kingdom in the distance.  Ben and Audrey, the king and queen, Chad and—I don’t know—half the girls in school?“  
  
”…No one hides here,“ Evie said.  
  
"No one has to.  And maybe I’m just caught up in the stupid fairytale nonsense of this place, or maybe I’m actually starting to see things the way they really are. Being back with you again, and not having to watch our every move?  Just turning around when I want to see you instead of having to scale a tower wall? All this time, my mother was wrong.  Love is not weak, or ridiculous.  It’s actually  _really_ amazing.”  
  
Evie’s eyes stung.  Mal missed her chance three months ago, she wasn’t about to miss it again.  
  
“…I love you, E.  Evie, I think I’ve  _always_  loved you.”  
  
Once again, Mal was making Evie’s tears fall.  But this time, in all the best ways. In one move she was out of her chair and down on the floor with Mal, throwing her arms around her.  All at once, Mal melted into her hold, her eyes closing with contentment she didn’t even know she could feel.  
  
“I love you too, Mal.  I love you too.”  
  
“…We can be something here, Evie.”  
  
“We can.”  
  
“We wouldn’t have to be scared.”  
  
“We wouldn’t.”  
  
“And Evie?”  
  
Evie refused to let her go, but pulled away enough to meet the forest of green shining at her.  
  
“…I’ll never say goodbye again,” Mal promised.  
  
Evie just nodded, not saying anything because she knew the tears in her eyes would choke her voice.  Mal hugged her back, burying her face in those waves of blue that she’d so happily drowned in what felt like forever ago.  
  
 _“Love is weakness, my dear.”_  
  
 _No,_  Mal thought.   _Love is strength.  And as long as we’re here, and as long as we’re together, I will always be strong, mother.  I will always be strong._  
  



End file.
